Introduction
I’m a relative newcomer (only about 25 years now) to the joys of making and drinking strong Belgian beers but those I’ve made seemed to taste almost good. So now, I feel like I’m an expert already – especially as some of these beers won prizes at local homebrew competitions. Such is the power of ignorance I suppose. With this new-found confidence, I want to share some of the knowledge that I sort of discovered along the way when formulating these beers.
As everyone knows, the secret of a good Belgian strong ale is to make it taste as if it’s not strong at all. These are the archetypal stealth beers—a couple of glasses and your legs have mysteriously disappeared. Even my long-suffering wife was fooled, once (and that’s not at all easy) and has found herself legless on this stuff (and she has some nice legs)!
To achieve this stealth character, the Belgian monks and their little friends, use significant amounts of sugar in their recipes and deploy turbo-charged, high attenuating yeasts to keep the body of the beer light. They also highly carbonate their beer like hell a lot to make it frothy and light. In this way, drinking a 10% beer can be a bit like drinking soda. Of course, the funky Belgian yeasts do also add complex phenolic character to the flavor to keep things interesting.
Anyway, back to the Cheapskate’s stuff. There is a general feeling that the best sugar to use in making Belgian beers is something called ‘candi sugar’. As a (former) chemist, I was interested to find out what candi sugar actually was and, in the interests of scientific research and to save money, to find out if I could make my own.
On reading around the topic, I found that most candi sugar is actually the same as table sugar (or sucrose as scientists call it). It’s sort of boiled up and recrystallized into big chunks that are added to the boiling wort. In instances where a light beer is being made (e.g. a tripel or a golden ale) table sugar can be used instead of candi sugar.
Where things start to get interesting is when a dark beer is to be made. In these instances, roasted or caramel malts would be inappropriate as they would detract from the desired flavor of the final beer and add significant body. Special B or other exotic dark malts are often used but, in such instances, they are usually supplemented with dark sugars. These dark sugars may also bring interesting fruity flavors of their own to the final beer.
At this point I learnt from my reading that most Belgian breweries don’t use candi sugar anyway! It seems to be an American thing. Instead they use sugar syrups that are delivered by large industrial tankers.
Dark sugar syrups can be purchased from your local friendly home-brew store. This is what I assume most of us would do for convenience and to ensure predictable results. I bought some D-180 syrup and it was great and I thoroughly recommend it.
However, being a cheapskate chemist of British heritage, I thought I would still like to see if I could make my own.
I think I had considerable success in this enterprise—hence the reason for this section in the website.
How to Make Your Own Candi Sugar Syrup
One way to darken sugar is to put some table sugar in a pan with a bit of water and keep heating it until it goes brown. This process is called caramelization and is used to make toffee! While this is one way of darkening sugar, it’s not the best.
Instead, we will break down some of the sugars using the magic of chemistry. In this case it’s something called a Maillard (pronounced as ‘Mayar’) reaction. Monsieur Maillard, who was from some foreign country called France, invented interesting foods like toast, seared steaks, bacon, dark malt, roast coffee, brownies and of course French fries. A lot of foods turn brown when they are heated. This is not because they burn but rather because chemical reactions take place within the food. Monsieur Maillard found that amino acids in the food react with sugars and other carbohydrates to form complex dark, very large polymeric compounds often with pleasant flavors—this is why cooked meat tastes better than raw meat and why we now have to use knives, forks and chop-sticks so our fingers don’t get burnt.
In the case of making a dark candi sugar syrup, all we need is some sugar, some amino acids, some means of heating this stuff and we’re in business.
Fortunately, to make things easier, ammonia will also promote the Maillard reaction. You could use floor cleaner but a better (and more palatable) way is to use diammonium phosphate (DAP) which is available from your friendly homebrew store (I know this because that’s where I got mine). This chemical compound is used as a yeast nutrient and so its presence in the wort is going to have additional benefits in helping to later feed hungry yeast cells. When DAP is heated, it dissociates into pure ammonia gas (which is what we need) and phosphoric acid. The phosphoric acid actually helps with the sugar conversion because it promotes hydrolysis (or inversion) of the disaccharide sucrose into the monosaccarides fructose and glucose—these undergo the Maillard reaction more easily (and are the easiest for yeast to ferment).
Anyway, enough of this science stuff, here’s how to make dark candi syrup in the comfort of your own home…
Ingredients
Not much is needed and it’s all cheap stuff!
Tools
This stuff gets very hot so keep plastic things away from it. Choose a pot (or saucepan) with a copper or aluminum base to minimize any burning at the start of the boil. The pot capacity should be 3x to 4x greater than the volume of the syrup to allow for frothing. I found a wooden spoon worked well although it discolored, it didn’t scratch the pot like a metal spoon would (as it did in the photos below). A digital meat thermometer with a long probe would also work well for measuring the temperature.
Candi Sugar Syrup Recipe
Yield ~ 1.5 lb (but scale quantities for different amounts)
- Into your favorite saucepan put:
- 16 oz of table sugar
- 4 oz of corn sugar
- 6 oz of cold water
- 2 tablespoons of molasses (optional but gives a great fruity flavor)
- Remove the lid and put the pot on the stove and bring everything to the boil with stirring
- Check the temperature with a suitable thermometer (I use my cheap digital one). The temperature should be around 215°F.
- The boiling sugar solution will froth heavily.
- Continue boiling until the temperature reaches about 235°F.
At this point the contents of the pan are starting to become very dangerous (think of Napalm), so be very careful. Wear suitable gloves, eye protection and a big apron. Flip flops and a bikini are not recommended. Make sure that the neighbor’s dog is not around, too.
- Add 1/4 teaspoon of DAP.
- The frothing will immediately reduce and you’ll detect the lovely smell of ammonia coming from the saucepan reminding you of the old sanatorium. If you don’t smell this, add some more DAP – but don’t overdo it.
- Continue to boil the sugar solution vigorously and monitor the temperature. I found that stirring wasn’t really needed any more and there was little risk of burning occurring at the bottom of the pan.
- Once the temperature hits about 250°F, you’ll start to see it darken. Things now start to happen very quickly so turn down the heat a bit. The trick is to stop the boil once you get to the color you need—gold, amber, copper, mahogany or almost black. Add the molasses (very carefully) at this point if you want to use them. I find that about 285°F gives a good result – it will taste very fruity and will give a light to mid amber color to your beer. The syrup will start to turn black at ~300°F but it will then give a deep ruby-color red when diluted. I haven’t gone further but assume it’s possible—but take things very slowly at this point – you don’t want fancy charcoal in your beer.
- Once you’ve got the color you need, add boiling water to cool and dilute it (CAREFUL—it will complain, froth and spit) to bring the boiling point back to 235°F. If you don’t add this water, you won’t have syrup at all when it cools but a big black gunky very solid mess (think of obsidian) in the saucepan which will now need to be thrown away along with the sugar.
- You can store the syrup once water has been added or tip it directly into the boiling wort. I do the latter about 10 minutes before the end of the boil.
- However, if you want to put away some solid candi sugar for a rainy day, tip out the thick syrup without adding water, onto a suitable metal tray lined with aluminum foil. Careful – it will get very hot. Let the syrup cool and solidify and smash it up with a great big hammer. Then put it into a jar, seal it well, put a nice pretty label on the jar and store it until needed.
The broken-up candi sugar looks very friendly and tasty. Don’t be fooled! It is very similar to broken glass – very hard and very sharp – it will easily cut your fingers if you handle it and I dread to think what it will do to the inside of your mouth. Be very careful in handling this stuff.
So, there you have it. If your beer tastes crap after using this, don’t blame me—mine have won competitions!
Besides adding this candi syrup to Belgian strong ales, I’ve used it in other beers (and ciders). It does seem to give a more interesting finish (or ‘je ne sais quoi’ as M. Maillard probably would have said) than the traditional table sugar or corn sugar.
The other use I have for this syrup is in priming bottled beer. The Maillardized sugars are highly fermentable and are a great way to condition bottled beers.
Enjoyed the recipe (and side comments). How hydroscopic is the smashed up solid sugar? If the fragments melt together again in the glass jar, problems could ensue in getting it out.
I have a Belgian Quad 11.9% (I was really trying for 12) that did well in a local competition. I will use your Candi sugar when I make that beer again.
I think that’s a great question! I think the crystalized candi sugar is going to be almost certainly hydroscopic and will start to stick together when exposed to air. Keep it in a well sealed jar and you should be OK – especially if you don’t make a huge amount.
Good suggestion about small amounts. Worst case of glued together fragments would be to add water and dissolve the whole mess.